Page 36 of The Librarians

It is half past ten. Sophie has been speaking for almost an hour.

Jonathan and Astrid, mouths agape, are still trying to digest what they’ve heard. Hazel, who has known for some time that something was the matter, if not precisely what the matter was, brings Sophie some water.

Sophie drinks gratefully. The table before her is a junkscape of open salsa containers, discarded tea bags, and half-eaten food. It has been like that the entire time Sophie talked: Nobody ate, nobody cleaned up, nobody did anything at all.

Sophie picks up her thoroughly cold breakfast taco and bites into the now soggy tortilla.

“Does—does Elise know?” asks Astrid.

Sophie isn’t sure whether her question concerns Elise’s parentage or the hole to the center of the Earth Sophie has dug for herself. But the answer is the same. “Not yet.”

Jonathan gathers up a handful of trash and pitches everything into the wastebasket behind him. “So you still have Jeannette Obermann’s phone?”

“Unfortunately so. At first I was paranoid about getting all traces of my DNA wiped off. Then I was like, ‘Oh, no, if they had her phone, they’d know right away she contacted me just before she died’—which had me really conflicted since I want the police to have whatever other evidence might be there on her phone.

“But the worst is—” The sinking feeling from the night before engulfs Sophie again.

She gulps for air. “In my panic that night, between doing everything else, I read one crucial piece of information wrong.

I thought I had weeks before the police would have her phone records.

But they might have them already—and if not, they must be very close.

“And once they get them, once they see what Jeannette Obermann texted me that night, they are going to zero in on me like a heat-seeking missile.”

The walls of the Den of Calories are already closing in on her. “My life flashes before my eyes three times a day. I don’t know what to do once the police get their hands on the phone records. And above all I’m petrified the truth about Jo-Ann and Elise will come out and I’ll lose Elise.”

Silence. Even the roof seems to be lowering ominously.

Ever since she made the choice to honor Jo-Ann’s dying wish, Sophie has steeled herself for the day it could blow up on her. The passage of the years might have made her less wary, but a pool of fear has always rippled quietly in the depths of her mind.

But still, she’s unprepared for the destruction being found out like this would unleash.

And while it was such an overwhelming relief to unburden herself to Jonathan, Astrid, and Hazel, panic, like quicksand, is rising around her again.

In fact, she might have done them a great unkindness.

Now if the police question these three about Jeannette Obermann—or about Elise, if it comes to that—they will no longer be able to plead ignorance.

“So…” says Hazel, her voice remarkably even, “I guess it would help if we knew who actually killed Jeannette—and Perry.”

The library is open on Sundays from noon to five.

Sophie and Astrid, who are not on the schedule, leave together a little before eleven—Sophie has invited Astrid to stay for a few days at her house until Astrid feels comfortable going back to her condo.

Jonathan sleepwalks through the first couple hours of his shift, straightening up the rolling carts next to the circulation area every time he’s completely distracted by the revelations of the day.

At three o’clock, Hazel, coming off an hour facing the public, signals that she wants to talk to him. They walk outside under the guise of a quick break.

The day is sunny and mild. Hazel looks tired. For the first time he notices tiny lines at the corners of her eyes.

“You wouldn’t happen to smoke, would you, Jonathan?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I stopped when I got out of the navy. You?”

“Not anymore, either. But right now I could really use one, or even half a cigarette.”

In her place, he would have gone through a pack by now.

Whatever she wants to talk to him about would most likely involve finding out what exactly Conrad was doing on Game Night.

He feels a great reluctance. Part of him wonders whether in doing so he will burn all his bridges with Ryan.

But more than that, he is in a strange agony for her.

The uncertainty must eat at her, yet the actual knowledge could prove ten times worse.

“What’s your plan?” he says after a moment.

She pulls one sleeve of her argyle sweater straight, then folds it up an inch. “You remember last night I left my dessert container behind in Conrad’s house and had to go back and get it?”

He nods.

She stills, then starts on her other sleeve. “I left it by design. I wanted an excuse to see Conrad again, even if it was a flimsy excuse.”

His heart aches for her, for all those hopes withering on the vine.

“But when I saw Ryan’s car,” she continues, her words as considered as her motions, “I decided to question him alone.”

So that Jonathan wouldn’t be thrown into this potentially seismic knowledge about—at that time—Ryan?

“Unfortunately, as a result of that, now I no longer have anything I can retrieve from their house. Did you, by any chance, also leave some items behind?”

Jonathan shakes his head. No such idea had occurred to him. Then again, he had not been outright refused by Ryan. He still had hopes of being invited back.

She tilts her head and smiles at him. “Can you pretend, then, to have left something behind?”

Her idea ignites a flare of excitement. But—“Wouldn’t Ryan have already seen it by now, if I’d left anything behind?”

“Tell him it’s a really small item. A flash drive. A location tracker from your wallet. Something that can fall into nooks and crannies.”

She is not throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. The woman is as committed as a kamikaze pilot.

“So we go back to Conrad’s house.” And then what?

“But only you will go through the front door. When you get in, ask to use the bathroom. You used the guest bathroom when we were there last time, right?”

He nods, already tense.

“It has a casement window—you know, the kind that opens out, instead of a sash that moves up and down?”

He didn’t really notice. The only time he was in that bathroom, he was in a hurry to finish, wash his hands, and get back to Ryan.

“There is no screen. Last night I opened it out of curiosity and didn’t hear any alarm going off. If you can unlock the window and leave it open a crack, I’ll be able to get in from there.”

“So you’re going to search Conrad’s house, like they do in movies?”

Her jaw moves. “I don’t want to, and I don’t think it’ll be useful. Conrad isn’t going to leave a printout of his guilt lying around and I’m neither a hacker nor a safebreaker. But if I don’t at least try, then I’ll have to ask him outright at some point, which—”

She takes a breath. “Which could be even more unsafe.”

It becomes Jonathan’s turn to take a deep breath—and whip out his phone. “Okay, might as well get it done now. Tell me what exactly I should have left behind at Conrad’s place.”

Hey Ryan, sorry to bother you. My wallet tracker might have fallen out at your house. At least that’s what my app says.

Ryan’s response comes twenty minutes later, well after Hazel and Jonathan have returned to work.

Jonathan finds Hazel, who is at the drive-through checkout station, handing a stack of books to a patron on a Harley, and shows her Ryan’s reply.

You want to come and look for it yourself? I’ll be home tonight.

“Does that work?”

Hazel hesitates only a moment. “It should. Thank you, Jonathan.”

“Hey, we’re all in this together.”

“You actually don’t need to be involved at all.” She takes his hand, her fingers cool yet strong. “In case it’s not yet clear, I am supremely grateful.”

Elise is delighted that Sophie brought Astrid home.

After a few questions about the “foundation fumigation” that forced Astrid from her condo, she quickly ropes Astrid in for an afternoon of board games.

Or rather, one game in particular, Elise’s current obsession, called Trails to Table , which combines foraging with gourmet menu planning.

At first Sophie worries that Elise has taken Astrid hostage. But Astrid gets into the game before too long. By the time Sophie reminds Elise to finish her homework, it’s Astrid who stands up more reluctantly, still hankering for another round.

“This is really interesting and complex, but not in a way that hurts your brain,” she says to Elise as they pack up.

“I know, right? The props are cute, but it’s the gameplay that’s really propulsive.” Elise hugs the box to her chest. “I love it. And thank you so much for playing with me!”

“Oh, gosh, don’t thank me. I might not leave now—I might just squat here to play games.”

“Don’t say that, Astrid, or Elise will start praying for the carpenter ants in your neighbor’s foundation never to go away!”

They all chortle at that. Elise bounces upstairs, humming a tune that Sophie is too out of pop culture to recognize.

“Come on,” Sophie says to Astrid, “let’s go for a walk. It’ll be dark soon.”

“Ooh, on the golf course?”

Sophie’s town house is situated in a cluster of tightly packed units at the edge of a sprawling neighborhood of single-family homes. And her front door, much to Astrid’s—and frankly Sophie’s own—marvel, opens onto a golf course.

From her tiny porch, they step almost directly onto the ribbon of asphalt originally intended for golf carts.

The sun is low in the sky, the wind is rising, but it’s not cold yet and a lager-pale light drizzles upon a long expanse of tall grass.

In the distance there are trees and in the even greater distance the land dips and rises again in a broad green slope.

The country club stopped watering the course several droughts ago. And it was thanks to the golf course falling into disuse—not to mention depressed real estate prices in the wake of the subprime meltdown—that Sophie was able to afford the town house on her librarian’s salary.

She loves the view: golden grass undulating in the breeze, dark green clusters of ash juniper, a grazing family of deer scattering upon their approach.

“Wow,” exclaims Astrid. “Everybody always tells me that Austin is full of deer, but it’s the first time I’ve seen so many at once.”

“Good thing I’m not a gardener.” Sophie laughs a little. “I love deer as wildlife but gardeners around here have to jump through hoops to make sure their plants don’t get eaten.”

The path dips and they enter a small green tunnel made by tree branches meeting overhead.

Astrid turns toward Sophie. “You’ve built a good life for yourself and Elise. You really have, Sophie.”

Sophie knows this. Of course she knows this. But to hear it after days of relentless self-castigation…

“Thank you,” she says, a catch in her voice. She desperately needed to be reminded that while she might have put her foot in it on Game Night, she has not, by and large, messed up either her own life or Elise’s. “Thank you, Astrid. It means a lot to me.”

And then, not wanting either of them to feel too self-conscious, she keeps talking. “But it’s been good for me, too, to be Elise’s mother. Left to my own devices, I probably would have been a hermit.”

But she couldn’t have inflicted such isolation on Jo-Ann’s daughter.

Jo-Ann would have been the pillar of any community.

She would have hosted neighborhood barbecues, organized school supply donations, and given out dozens of rum cakes at Christmas.

Everyone would have known and loved Jo-Ann and everyone would have cared about her kid.

Sophie, nowhere near as extraverted as Jo-Ann, nevertheless served as school crossing guard when Elise was little, coached Elise’s soccer teams even though she was a track-and-field athlete and not a team sport player, and to this day is still involved with the HOA.

And in this area, where the Claremonts are demographic outliers, all her neighbors know and love Elise.

A pair of young does dash across the man-made prairie, leap through someone’s unfenced yard, and disappear into the residential street beyond.

“Can I ask you a question, Sophie?”

The wind tousles Astrid’s red-streaked hair. Her eyes shine with curiosity and—a second passes before Sophie recognizes it as admiration. Astrid has always approached Sophie with deference, but Sophie had attributed it to a girl from overseas feeling intimidated by a no-nonsense Black woman.

Now Sophie’s shield of invincibility lies in shards, yet the warm acclaim in Astrid’s gaze remains undimmed.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“I was—I was trying to escape my pretense, but you needed to make yours a permanent reality. I guess my question is, when did this stop being a pretense for you?”

On the drive from the library to Sophie’s place, Astrid told Sophie the reason she no longer has a Swedish accent—that she was never Swedish to begin with.

Sophie glances back in the direction of her house, the direction of her reality. “In one sense, it became all too real right away—in the criminal sense, I guess. I could go to jail for my impulsive decision to honor Jo-Ann’s wishes.

“As for when I started to think of Elise not as Jo-Ann’s child but my own, that took a good bit longer.”

Thrusting a child on a woman with no maternal instincts does not instantly turn her into supermom. It just makes her a frazzled mess with a bawling baby, desperately trying to regain a semblance of control.

This is not an admission that Sophie makes lightly—Mommy Judgment is real and fearsome.

But that solid baseline of approval from Astrid makes it easier to speak the truth.

“Children are such vectors of chaos and uncertainty and I’ve never been a fan of either.

I’m pretty sure that if, when Elise was one, Jo-Ann’s mom had turned up and said, ‘I won’t report you to the police, I’ll just quietly take the baby off your hands,’ I would have handed Elise over and told Jo-Ann’s ghost that I tried.

“But by the time she turned three I would have spent my last penny to hold on to her. I’m an okay communicator at work, but not so much in my personal life. I think Elise learned to say ‘I love you’ from Barney, frankly. She loved to say ‘I love you’ and she taught me to say it back.”

Sophie’s voice thickens. “She made us a reality. She made us into a family. How do you ever give up the person who taught you everything about love?”

Astrid hugs Sophie, a warm, comfortable hug, like when Elise made Sophie embrace her favorite teddy bear. “You’ll stay a family, always.”

“I hope so,” Sophie murmurs. She again looks in the direction of her house, her reality. “I really hope so.”